Daily News

Finland — Number of employed continues to fall

26 January 2010

According to the latest Labour Force Survey published by Statistics Finland today, there were 86,000 fewer persons employed in December 2009 than in December 2008. The number of unemployed persons increased by 44,000 and the unemployment rate went up by 1.8 percentage points from 12 months back.

The number of persons not in the labour force was 62,000 higher in December 2009 than one year earlier. The average annual unemployment rate in 2009 was 8.2%, or nearly two percentage points higher than in 2008 when it stood at 6.4 percentage points.

In December 2009, the number of employed persons was 2,410,000, which was 86,000 lower than a year earlier.

There were 62,000 fewer employed men and 24,000 fewer employed women than in December 2008. The number of wage and salary earners fell but that of self-employed persons stayed nearly unchanged. The number of employed persons decreased in the Provinces of Southern, Western and Eastern Finland.

In December, the employment rate (that is the proportion of the employed among persons aged 15 to 64) stood at 67%, which was 2.6 percentage points lower than one year before. Adjusted for seasonal and random variation, the trend of the employment rate was 67.3%. Men's employment rate fell by 3.7 percentage points to 66.9% and women's by 1.5 percentage points to 67% from December one year before.

There were 206,000 unemployed in December 2009, i.e. 44,000 more than one year earlier. The number of unemployed men grew by 34,000 and that of unemployed women by 11,000.

At 7.9%, the unemployment rate was 1.8 percentage points higher in December than one year earlier. The trend of the unemployment rate was 9% in December. The unemployment rate for men rose by 2.6 percentage points to 8.7% and that for women by 0.9 percentage points to 7%. In December 2009, the unemployment rate among young people aged 15 to 24 was 20.2%, which was 7.8 percentage points higher than in the previous year's December. The trend of the unemployment rate among young people was 23.7%.

The unemployment rate was lowest in the Province of Southern Finland, where it stood at 6.3%, and highest, at 10.6%, in the Province of Eastern Finland.

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